Again "predatory lending" is a standard term, that has a commonly accepted meaning. What you're describing doesn't fit.
The probability of that person digging themself out of that hole and being able to achieve the common expectations of a family, house, vacations, retirement, weekends, etc is pretty low.
And someone with $60k in public loans most certainly can dig themselves out of that hole, because repayment is capped at 10% of disposable income, and it is cancelled after 20 years.
The government under the Obama administration changed things so that "Federal" loans instead of being made by private organizations and backed by the government, were directly distributed from the treasury.
However even before this, there were separate Federal and private loans, and the only way to get to $200k (for undergrad) was to get unsubsidized private loans that weren't backed by the government.